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Looking for a CPU Fan replacement

At the moment I have the Arctic Alpine 11 Plus running but that one shortly began to rattle, I looked for a solution or a way to fasten the fan itself but there was no possibility of improving the stability of the fan.

So now I'm looking for decently priced a replacement, I've looked around a bit but couldn't really make up my mind based on given fans and reviews.

I've been looking at some 'bundle' mobo/cpu/memory packages and it does seem that water-cooling is the new 'must have' - I've always dismissed it as something for people intent on squeezing their hardware to death in search of a few more FPS, but looking around it does seem that there are some quite sensible water-cooling systems out there, sealed for life and almost more practical than some of the higher-end air-coolers?

The only real fiddly bit seems to be choosing a case which can mount their radiators appropriately and without the flexi-pipes getting in teh way of everything??

Is this the way forward then - are they reliable enough to replace a half-decent cooler or am I just looking at too many overclocked bundles? :)

Watercooling isn't really worth the price. I'm running a heavily overclocked Intel on a passive heatsink. There's no fan on it. Granted, it's a huge tower heatsink and its grabbing airflow from the PSU and the rear case fan, but still.

It's cool, has some uses but in general from a money invested vs reward standpoint it's a very poor choice. With a good heatsink you can get similar performance for a fraction of the cost.

Watercooling isn't really worth the price. I'm running a heavily overclocked Intel on a passive heatsink. There's no fan on it. Granted, it's a huge tower heatsink and its grabbing airflow from the PSU and the rear case fan, but still.

sounds like your cpu heatsink is bigger than my case! Watercooling has a very important place for those who want high performance in small form factors.

Is this the way forward then - are they reliable enough to replace a half-decent cooler or am I just looking at too many overclocked bundles? :)

I know I've been an ass towards you in the past, but it was only my deranged way of helping you with your next upgrade. You have to admit, there was some helpful info sprinkled in between the over the top nonsense I hurled at you. I'm not going to do that this time.